The ability to play a given sport with proficiency is an integral element to a player's enjoyment and success in playing the game. Of course, it will also be appreciated that practice and skill development are inherently necessary to improving one's proficiency in any sport including, for example, hockey. Even further, one knowledgeable in the art will be well aware that skill proficiency can be achieved most readily by the efficient and constructive use of the time that is dedicated to skill practice and development. As one would expect, therefore, athletes expend significant time and effort in honing their skills. For example, hockey players engage in countless repetitions of varied types of practicing passing, receiving, handling, and shooting.
Advantageously, numerous prior art inventors and substantially innumerable coaches have contributed usefully to the present state of the art by providing drills, devices, and systems for enabling players to practice and improve their skills. For example, a number of devices have been disclosed for dispensing game projectiles, such as hockey pucks, for being handled and struck by a player. Such devices are of undeniable utility in their general ability for making game projectiles available to a user for being struck and otherwise handled.
Unfortunately, however, these devices suffer from a number of disadvantages. For example, prior art devices typically can dispense game projectiles in only one direction whereby they are suitable for players of only one type of hand dominance. Furthermore, even where the player's hand dominance corresponds to the design of the machine, the player may have difficulty practicing certain types of shots that would normally demand that the puck be dispensed from an opposite direction. By way of example, the same player may find the direction of puck dispensing to be proper when practicing slap shots but opposite to what he or she would want for practicing backhanded passes and shots. Even further, many dispensing devices of the prior art are unable to supply multiple hockey pucks or other game projectiles in a rapid and efficient manner without a need for electricity or other power.
For these and further reasons, it is clear that there is a need for a device for dispensing game projectiles that overcomes one or more of the deficiencies left by the prior art. It is still more clear that a device for dispensing game projectiles that overcomes all of the known disadvantages of the prior art while providing a plurality of heretofore unrealized advantages thereover would represent a marked advance in the art.